‘National Scheduled Caste Commission supports SC rights for Dalit Christians and Muslims’

By Pervez Bari, TwoCircles.net
 
Bhopal : Dr. Buta Singh, the National Scheduled Caste Commission, (NSCC), chairman, has said that he was committed to the cause of all Dalits (down-trodden), whatever is their religion.  He said his Commission would examine the issues in the Justice Misra Report compassionately.
   
The above assurance was given by Dr. Buta Singh to a high powered Christian delegation, including the All India Catholic Union and the All India Christian Council which met him on Sunday. The delegation, led by Dr. John Dayal, Member, National Integration Council, Government of India, consisted of Issac Behera, Advocate Edward Arokio Doss and C Francis. The delegation submitted a detailed memorandum to him.
   
The delegation reportedly told Buta Singh that two previous chairmen of the SC Commission, who were nominated by the then Bharatiya Janata Party and who had allegiance to the Hindutva groups, had spoken against Dalit Christians and Muslims out of political bigotry, without going into the merits of the case.
   
According to a Press statement issued by Dr. John Dayal, the meeting came immediately after the Government of India, through additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam, told the Supreme Court of India bench headed by Chief Justice, that it was awaiting a report from the National Scheduled Caste Commission, a statutory body, to give its opinion on the issue of Scheduled rights for Dalit Christians. The Supreme Court on July 19 resumed hearings on a Public Interest writ litigation challenging the Presidential Order of 1950, which denies scheduled rights to Christians and Muslims converted from the former untouchable castes.
   
Buddhist and Sikhs, who were also excluded earlier, were restored scheduled rights by previous Congress and United Front governments through legislation in Parliament after protracted agitation.
   
Dr. Buta Singh said that he was of the opinion that Scheduled Caste protection and rights should be available to people of very religion who suffered from this social infirmity which existed in every religion. He said while Caste was no doubt a product of the Hindu religion, but every other religion which was born in India or came to India became contaminated with this malaise. Quoting a Persian couplet, he said "anything which enters a salt mine becomes salt."
   
He said his NSCC will submit its report expeditiously.  It will also tell the Government to implement Constitutional processes to raise the quota for Scheduled Castes and tribes, which was at present 15 per cent and 7.15 per cent to their actual numbers in the population. He said the Fathers of the Constitution had desired that the quota percentage be fixed on the basis of data that emerged from the National Census after ten years.
   
It may be pointed out here that after the writs were filed in the Supreme Court last year by the Public Interest Litigation center of former Union Law Minister Shanti Bhushan, Vellore lawyer D David, a Dalit, and Br Jose Daniel's Dalit movement, the Union Government urged the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities (NCRLM) to examine the issue.
   
The NCRLM, headed by another former Chief Justice of India Rangnath Misra, gave its report to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh two months ago before it was wound up at the expiry of its term. The NCRLM accepted the demands of the Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims that they suffered from the impact of caste in Indian society and therefore should be given the privileges and the protection of law given to people of the Scheduled Caste of the Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh Faiths,     In effect, the Justice Misra Commission said the Dalits of India suffered the same disabilities in society and opportunity and should not be discriminated against on grounds of religion. It suggested legislative and legal remedies to undo the impact of the Presidential Order of 1950. Instead of publishing the report and accepting it as demanded by the Dalit Christians and Muslims, the Government told the court it will await the opinion of the National Scheduled Caste Commission.
   
The Chief Justice has given Government of India eight weeks to come before the Supreme Court again to disclose its decision on the issue.
   
The Dalit Christian community has long agitated on the issue. Community leaders representing many organizations, including the Catholic Union, the Christian Council, the United Christian Action and the Union of Dalit Christians Movements India, an umbrella organization, met over the weekend to plan their course of action and demand that the government accept the Justice Misra Commission report.
   
The Justice Misra report has also recommended that groups such as Dalit Christians who it wants in the Scheduled Caste category may be deleted from the OBC grouping of the population. ([email protected])